Purchasing music.

THis thread is all about legal music purchases. Please, NO talk about illegal downloading in this thread.

I prefer to have a CD in my hands than to make a purchase on iTunes. I don't like digital music purchase scenarios that involve transfer and download restrictions. I once purchased a couple of concerts on a digital download site, and mY HD crashed, and I lost the concerts. But there was a time limit to DL the concerts after I made the purchase, so if I wanted the concerts again, I would have had to purchase them again. I said, "fuck that," and let it go.

So, I would rather have a CD than a digital purchase. Especially when one considers that most digital purchases are in lossy formats.

I have to vote for physical also, even though I really don't download much music to begin with (partly for that very reason). I much prefer to have a physical copy of the digital files, so that I already have the factory original and can then compress and tinker with the tracks however I would like, on top of still having the file should my hard drive fail. That, and a physical copy also comes with the physical representation of the music in your collection. Sure, people can see what music you have on your playlist, but to have the physical 'real life' copy of the music in your possession, well it's akin to avid readers having a large bookshelf full of books they've read, I suppose.

So yeah, I would only do downloads on stuff that I want in my playlist immediately, as opposed to waiting to get a CD.

You understand my iPod holds like 50 CDs worth of music or some shit, right? I'd never haul around a CD player since it's huge and entirely useless aside from playing CDs. It doesn't even tell the time, damn it! When I do purchase music, if it's got DRM or some shit protecting it, I rip it somehow so I can stick it on my ipod. I go with streaming nowadays, though. So that metal I Hate so much from 2 years go just sits.